


A Lesson

by samariumwriting



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Could be read as romantic ig, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Spoilers, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 03:59:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18358163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Everything has settled down, but someone comes to Reyn and tells him Shulk has been acting strangely. It reminds Reyn of a time long ago, when he barely knew his best friend, and had to find a way to get him to open up.





	A Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request from @NullNoMore over on twitter, who gave me three options, one being Reyn explaining something to Shulk that he doesn't understand. Cue me starting, realising what I was doing didn't work, but making it work by producing this 3.8k monster of a fic. It gets to the point in the end, I promise!

Every evening, the children of the colony liked to come round to the house Reyn shared with Sharla and Juju and clamour for attention. They did it every evening, to the point that Sharla had started opening the door at a particular time to let them all in, and she got Juju to bake a batch of biscuits every night to keep them quiet as the evening dragged on.

Reyn never had the heart to turn them away, no matter how tired out he was by all the exertions of the day. And they always asked him about the same stuff; what was travelling across the Bionis like, what was Mechonis like, my mum said you killed a god, is that true? It was always, always about things he hoped they’d never have to experience themselves.

One evening, though, they changed direction with what they were asking, and the question on everyone’s tongue was what Shulk used to be like. Most of them were Colony 9 kids, of course, so they’d grown up with Shulk, and the rest were all from places where Shulk had been with the group of them. And it had always been Shulk who went round speaking to people’s kids, playing with them while the adults of the group bartered for provisions and armour.

So kids knew Shulk, or had known Shulk. It seemed strange they were asking after him. They’d never asked before, and if they wanted to know things about him, they could have just asked him up front about his adventures. “Why d’ya wanna know?” he asked, and the group of them mumbled to each other in a way that sounded almost uneasy.

“No reason,” Lukas said. The guilty tone in his voice, however, said otherwise. “We just thought it would be interesting to know! I was only a baby when Shulk got here and Dickson is gone now, so…”

“You want to know what Shulk was like when he was your age?” he asked with a laugh. He hoped it was just curiosity. Maybe he should check on Shulk, just in case something was up. In front of him, all the kids nodded, and Reyn exaggerated a sigh and moved over to the living room, a trail of kids behind him.

As he sat down, he saw Sharla and Juju sit down by the doorway, just like always; Juju was curious, and Sharla liked to interject to add a note of realism to some of the stories. There was no need for the latter, of course, because this was one case when Sharla wasn’t there, but she probably wanted to hear this one too. “So, here’s a story about Shulk, from when we were both, hmm, I’d say we were both about ten…”

-

Reyn was off on a wild goose chase again, because yet again, his next door neighbour had lost the kid he was looking after. Because, for some reason, he kept running away. And, for some reason, Dickson hadn’t learned to lock the door after the last three times Shulk had gone missing in the middle of the night. And the five times he’d run off in broad daylight.

It was dawn, and Reyn was meant to be getting ready to go to school. But no, just as the sun was rising, Dickson had knocked on the door and informed them that Shulk was missing. Again. So they’d gathered together everyone who wasn’t busy to go and find him. Again.

Reyn could hear the grumbling of the couple who lived three doors down as Dickson explained what was going on - they were annoyed that Dickson just didn’t learn, and that he thought it was any of their business to go looking for a strange child who clearly didn’t want to be here. At this point, Reyn was inclined to agree; there was no way Shulk actually liked Colony 9, and Dickson was really bad at looking after him.

Most of the adults headed out of the colony, searching the areas where Shulk might have managed to get into trouble. He was surprisingly hardy, but when he vanished there was always the fear that they might be looking for a body. Shulk hadn’t even been found in any imminent danger yet, but it wasn’t like the colony was safe.

Because of that, Reyn was left to search the streets of the residential district with instructions to head to school once it got to the right time. In the past, he’d searched until Shulk had been found, but now it had happened so many times he wasn’t sure if it was worth staying away from school for.

But as the time to head over to the schoolhouse approached, Reyn realised he couldn’t go in good conscience. He couldn’t just leave Shulk to whatever might be happening to him. What if Shulk was just hiding somewhere, or he’d managed to get stuck, or someone else found him and told him off for always bothering everyone?

There was just something about Shulk that Reyn couldn’t ignore. Something different that set him apart from everyone else that meant Reyn couldn’t just give up on him like he felt everyone else was. It felt like everyone else had; Dickson didn’t lock the door, the teachers didn’t try to get him to speak up in lessons, other kids didn’t try and get him to play with them anymore. They’d resigned themselves to the fact that Shulk wasn’t meant to be here like the rest of them were, and he didn’t think that was fair.

That said, it was hard to argue with them in a situation like this. This was the ninth time Shulk had left the house without telling Dickson, or anyone, where he was going, and he was always disappointed when someone managed to find him. If anything, Shulk was actively resisting all attempts people made to help him.

The time that he was meant to be in school was long past by the time Reyn got his first hint of where Shulk might be. He’d wandered all the way over to the commercial district by now, and he was getting looks from the stallholders that told him he’d be in trouble later when people heard about what time he’d been out of school. But one of the shopkeepers had taken one look at him, sighed, and pointed over towards the warehouse with the staircase to the upper level. “I think I saw a glimpse of him over that way,” she said.

“Thank you!” Reyn called, dashing off in the direction he’d come from and keeping an eye out for the telltale sight of Shulk’s hair. Up to the higher level, or watching the water from the edge of the colony? Maybe he’d tucked himself under a staircase, or gone that way to get out of the colony rather than through the residential district exit. But if he’d left, the group who’d gone out to look for him probably would have found him by now…

Resigning himself to a continued search for now, Reyn climbed the steps to the upper level of the commercial district. The walkways were narrow, with nowhere to just sit down and stay away from anyone who might be looking. After a couple of minutes, Reyn ruled that section of the colony out. He’d never even seen Shulk up here before, and it didn’t seem like the kind of place he’d go to.

The area over at the edge of the colony was a little more likely. He quickly looked over the area, and went behind the stairs to check that Shulk wasn’t sitting behind them. Still nothing. Reyn sighed. The last place to check was just up the stairs, and then he’d probably go round the residential area again. Just to check anything he might have missed. Maybe Shulk had moved, or something.

There was no sign of Shulk at the top of the stairs, either, and Reyn turned around to look over the area he’d just checked. Yep, nothing. Just the ground, empty of people, and a handful of crates stacked on top of each other up the other end of the corridor between the warehouse and the edge of the colony.

...wait.

Reyn squinted at the crates and then jumped on the spot, craning his neck up to see if he could spot- yes! His eyes finally caught sight of the telltale flash of light hitting blond hair. Shulk was over there.

The only problem now was reaching him. Shulk was slim and small and Reyn had no idea if he was all that good at climbing, but he’d clearly managed to get over the boxes without knocking any and, most importantly, not falling over the edge of the colony. But Reyn was not good at climbing, and he was not elegant.

That said, it wasn’t like he could do anything else. So he jogged over to the boxes and hoisted his leg up over the first one. Then he pulled himself up over the second one. Just two more to climb over, but he was getting quite a bit further from the ground now. Carefully, he shakily pulled himself up over the rim of the third box, only wobbling a little. The last box was smaller, and as he peered over the edge of it, he saw that Shulk was now watching him.

“Hi,” Reyn said, not daring to lift either of his hands from where they were planted on the box he was currently kneeling on. “Mind if I come over?”

“Yes,” Shulk said.

-

“Shulk isn’t rude like that!” Liliana objected. “You’re making things up to make the story cooler again.”

“I am not!” Reyn objected. “Shulk used to be a little brat. I did mention in the story that it was the ninth time he’d run away, right? Also, it’s not cool to skip school, okay? So I’m not trying to make myself look cool.”

“I think it’s just like the giant spider story,” Rocco agreed.

“Hey, that one was true!” Reyn said. “You could ask Shulk about both of these, you know. He’d tell you that I’m telling the truth.”

Silence settled over the room again, and the creeping, tiny amount of dread in Reyn’s stomach slithered back. But no other complaints about his story were raised, so Reyn continued. “So when Shulk said that, I said…”

-

“Tough,” shooting Shulk a grin and hauling himself up over the final box so he was sitting on top. The annoyance in Shulk’s gaze was clear. “Can we talk? If you say no, I’ll just talk anyway and have the conversation up here where everyone can see I’m talking to someone.”

“Fine,” Shulk said, shifting over so his back was no longer against the crates so Reyn could make his way down without risking hitting Shulk over the head. Once he had both feet on the ground again, Shulk just stared at him, clearly waiting for him to speak.

“Why do you keep running off?” Reyn asked. He left out the bit about how it was so demanding for everyone for now. His mum always said to only put some of the cards on the table at first if you wanted to win an argument.

“I want to, and I can,” Shulk replied.

“But why do you even want to?” Reyn asked. “It’s hot out at the moment, and Dickson’s house is cool. If you’d just stayed out here all day, you’d get uh. Heatstroke?” He couldn’t remember the word for it, but his parents had told him about it last year when he got sick after spending too much time outside.

“Yeah,” Shulk said. “But it’s...cold in Dickson’s house. I’d rather be out here.” It was then that Reyn remembered that Shulk didn’t just not fit, he was actually a bit weird. He remembered seeing Shulk for the first time, huddled in an oversized coat. So he didn’t like the cold, but that didn’t explain why he’d go outside in the middle of the night.

“It’s cold out here at night too,” Reyn said. “Why not stay inside? Then you wouldn’t worry anyone.”

“They’d rather I be gone,” Shulk said with a shrug. Reyn didn’t know how to object to that. He knew it wasn’t true, because no one wanted Shulk to be dead, or they wouldn’t go searching for him time after time. But Shulk knew that, and he still thought they thought that, and he had no other reasons.

“Would you rather be gone?” Reyn asked. “I dunno if Dickson would want to go somewhere else, but you could-”

“No,” he said. “There isn’t anywhere else to go, and-” Shulk broke off in the middle of his sentence and glanced in the opposite direction. He was looking towards the military base, where Dickson worked. Where that thing Dickson had brought back at the same time as Shulk was.

“There isn’t anywhere else to go, but that doesn’t mean that here is good?” Reyn guessed. He could sort of maybe understand. There were quite a lot of people in Colony 9 who didn’t have parents, because of the occasional monster accidents, or Mechon raids. It was hard to be happy when you didn’t have parents, or at least he thought it would be. He loved his mum.

“Yeah,” Shulk said.

“That doesn’t mean you have to be miserable,” Reyn said. “You don’t have to run off in the middle of the night or anything. If you’re sad, you don’t have to be on your own.”

“Dickson’s busy in the day and sleeping at night,” Shulk said. “I can’t turn the light on, so I have to go outside. It’s better out here. I’m not running off, it’s just that people don’t like it when I leave.”

“Because they’re worried about you, Shulk,” Reyn said. He shuffled over to try and put an arm around Shulk, and the boy accepted it awkwardly, sitting completely still. “They think you’re going to get hurt.”

“I won’t,” Shulk said. “I always come to the commercial district at night.”

“Monsters can still get you in the day, y’know,” he said.

“I know!” Shulk protested. “They should stop worrying.”

“They’re worried about the reason you keep leaving,” Reyn said.

“It’s no reason,” Shulk said, far too quickly. There was clearly a reason.

-

“So, before I tell you the end of the story,” Reyn said, and there was a chorus of complaints from his audience. “There was a reason for Shulk running away all the time. So what’s the reason you’re here, asking me about Shulk? Because there is a reason, isn’t there?”

The children shifted uncomfortably before Lukas spoke up. “I think we upset Shulk,” he admitted. Reyn could have guessed that much from the way they’d been acting. “We were playing outside his house and he shouted at us and I don’t know what we did wrong.”

Reyn frowned. “That’s not like him,” he said. Shulk wasn’t a shouty person. He was just incredibly gentle, honestly. He only resorted to violence when he absolutely had to, these days. They must have done something to really upset him. “What were you playing?”

“We were doing the Battle of Sword Valley!” Rocco chimed in, and Reyn let out the breath he’d been holding. That was...understandable that Shulk got upset. They hadn’t gone fully into detail about everything that had happened with Dickson and Mumkhar, so the kids didn’t know what that kind of celebration meant to Shulk. It was a normal thing for him to be upset or angry about. But it still pointed to him feeling down.

“I see,” he said. “I’ll finish the story, kids. Shulk will understand if you just apologise, don’t worry about it.” They all nodded, and he continued. “So I told him…”

-

“There has to be a reason. People don’t do things for no reason.”

Shulk shifted uncomfortably under the weight of Reyn’s arm. “Why are you even trying to know?” he asked. “There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything. Sometimes things happen and you can’t control them happening.”

“I don’t mean like that,” he said, trying to keep calm. Shulk always hated it when people got loud, and Reyn felt like maybe he was getting something from this. He just wanted to help. “I mean that when you do something, you do it because you want to, or you feel like you have to, right?”

Shulk nodded. “So, when you run out of the house in the middle of the night and come to the commercial district, you’re doing that for a reason. You want to, uh, you said you want to be somewhere that isn’t Dickson’s house. So what’s there that you don’t like?”

Shulk bit his lip. “I don’t like it when it’s dark and cold,” he said. “Because it was dark and cold and when I woke up Dickson was the only one there.”

Reyn was going to be honest; he didn’t understand what Shulk was getting at there. But he had known from the start that there were a lot of things he just didn’t know about Shulk. And he might not know them for a while, but that was okay. It was all fine, as long as Shulk listened to him, because he cared. And while he had no clue what was going on, he knew Shulk was upset, so he put his other arm around Shulk and gave him a decidedly awkward hug.

“Do you feel real bad a lot?” he asked. He hadn’t pulled away, but he could feel the movement of Shulk’s head as he nodded. “Okay. That’s- it’s not good, but it’s fine, y’know? Because it’s a feeling. And people can help with feelings. So next time you want to run away, or you don’t want to do something, you can tell me, right?”

“Why?” Shulk mumbled into his shoulder.

“Because I don’t want you to feel bad,” he said. “I dunno, Shulk, I want you to be happy. My mum said that you’ve had it really hard and I don’t think you should anymore, and it makes me angry when people leave you out because they don’t understand you. So I want to help.”

Shulk shifted again, and Reyn thought he was going to pull away, but instead he wrapped his own arms around Reyn’s waist and moved closer. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

-

Once the story was done, all the children left pretty quickly, promising that tomorrow they’d go and apologise to Shulk for hurting him. As it was, Reyn had been telling the story for ages, and quite a few of them had been yawning by the end. Sure, it wasn’t as exciting as his normal stories, but he thought it had a different kind of importance for them. It had a lesson to teach, especially for the large numbers of them who’d lost someone and probably needed a lot more support than they were letting on.

As it was, there was a lesson in that story that apparently Shulk hadn’t kept hold of, so even though it was getting late, once all the kids were gone and the rooms were tidied, Reyn left the house and headed down the street.

Shulk lived on his own, on the top floor of a house that was a shop by day. There, he tinkered with everything under the sun to help fix just about everything in the colony. Reyn probably didn’t visit as much as he should, honestly; they were both busy people and their paths only crossed occasionally. He’d have to make more of an effort in the future. He wanted to show Shulk that he cared.

When he knocked on the door to Shulk’s house, the answering call was “it’s late, I’m closed!” At least he’d answered, honestly, because it told Reyn that he was there and listening.

“It’s me, Shulk!” he replied. “Or is friendship business hours only?”

Reyn heard Shulk laugh, another good sign, and within moments the door was opened. “It’s great to see you, Reyn,” he said, holding the door open to let him in. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Why call now?”

“I had some callers at my house earlier,” he said. “And they asked after you.”

Shulk almost immediately put his head in his hands. “It was a group of the kids, wasn’t it?” he asked. Reyn nodded, and Shulk groaned. “They were playing at battle right outside the shop. Calling out about the Monado, and Dickson and Mumkhar. I shouted at them to stop, and they all ran away pretty quickly. I shouldn’t have.”

“No, it’s okay,” he said, reaching over to put a hand on Shulk’s shoulder. Marginally, Shulk relaxed. “They should have known better. There’s a huge open area they can play anyway, and they shouldn’t reenact such recent things. They could very easily hurt someone, and they need to learn that. Just wish it hadn’t been you who they’d hurt.”

Shulk nodded. “It was a bad time,” he said with a sigh. “I wish it hadn’t happened at all. I had to close up early because I couldn’t face being down there, I was worried I’d snap at someone else who can’t just run to you for advice and a cookie.”

“Is it anything in particular?” Reyn asked. Shulk looked up at him, a question in his eyes. “Aw, come on, Shulk. Why was it a bad time? I can try and help.”

“I think it’s more something I need to work through on my own,” Shulk said.

Reyn shook his head sharply. “Nope,” he said. “Your problems are my problems, Shulk. Because we’re friends, and I care about you, remember? I don’t want you hurting on your own. It’s okay for you to talk to me about all this. I’m not going to hold it against you and I will absolutely help.”

Shulk let out a shaky breath. “You’re right,” he said. “Thanks, Reyn. I’ve been being stupid. I’m sorry.”

“No, no putting yourself down either,” he said firmly. “You haven’t been stupid. Just a temporary slip in judgement. Which, considering all the other things you have on your mind, I think can be completely forgiven.”

“Come and sit down, at least,” Shulk said. “And then we can talk properly. Even if it wasn’t stupid, I’m sorry for keeping it from you and worrying you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Reyn said, stepping further into the room. “What matters is now, and the future, which will be good, okay?” At his words, Shulk let out a sharp breath of air. Before he could say anything else, Reyn covered the distance between them and pulled him into his arms.

And just like all those years ago, this time with a little less hesitation, Shulk returned the hug, holding Reyn tightly. “You’re amazing, Reyn,” he said. “Thank you. I can’t- can’t even say how much it means.”

“You don’t need to,” he said firmly. “Just, you know, don’t forget what I told you before again, okay? I care about you, and I want you to be happy, and I’ll say it as many times as I need to for you to understand.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked something here or didn't like something, pleeeeease tell me either over here in the comments or on twitter (@samariumwriting). I'm happy to take any writing requests you might have because I have about three weeks until I yeet into the void for my uni term and I want to do as much writing as possible in that time.


End file.
